ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a substantial body of empirical research to show that the lack of human contact is the cause of many individual and social pathologies, such as psychosis and juvenile delinquency. It presents evidence that strongly suggests that the social pathologies associated with urban areas—delinquency and mental disorder—follow inevitably from the lack of intimate contact. The chapter describes the interplay of phenomena that causes the lack of intimate contact in urban areas. These phenomena are facets of a single complex syndrome: the autonomy-withdrawal syndrome. The chapter shows that in order to overcome the autonomy-withdrawal syndrome a city's housing must have twelve specific geometric characteristics and describes an arrangement of houses that has these characteristics. The configuration must be thought of simply as a partial specification of what a city has to be to function as a mechanism for sustaining human contact.
